Letter: Nassau maps follow county charter

Regarding "Court must stop Nassau power grab" [Editorial, Aug. 15], the only accurate statement in the piece is the last sentence: "The public must have the confidence that its local government is legitimate," because the public surely cannot have any confidence in the legitimacy of the facts reported by Newsday.

The facts are clear -- the Nassau County Charter states that the legislature shall adjust the 19 legislative district lines within six months of the release of the U.S. census to conform with the constitutional requirement of equal representation. The census was released April 1, and revealed that the configuration of the current Nassau County legislative districts is unconstitutional. In accordance with the county charter, the county attorney presented to the legislature corrected district lines to restore the legally permissible population counts per district. To ignore the census data would violate the constitutional edict of "one Man, one vote."

So, what you're saying is that one county attorney, 10 county legislators, one county executive and the majority of judges of the state Appellate Division are all in error on the proposed redistricting? Well, if so, then we could have saved a lot of time and aggravation if we'd just asked the "swells" over at the Newsday editorial board!

If there's a difference of opinion between the "elites" and the elected officials, I guess the "elites" are right every time!

Peter J. Schmitt, Massapequa

Editor's note: The writer is presiding officer of the Nassau County Legislature.